Eric Fischl

Plan comfortable shoes for the week: it’s another inundation of art fairs and satellite events.

Thankfully, Frieze and SPRING/BREAK’s new Brooklyn offshoot are the only big fairs we’re recommending by now, so fair fatigue shouldn’t be too much of a problem. But of course, the city is packed with art star openings, book launches, and more brunches than you can shake a croissant at. We’ve done you the favor of skimming only the best of the best events this week though, to save you from too much overload.

Highlights include Roxy Paine’s creepy interiors at Paul Kasmin Tuesday night, Martin Roth’s Twitter-fed lavender farm at the Austrian Cultural Forum on Wednesday, and Jon Rafman’s screening and book launch at Printed Matter on Thursday. If you’re not fair-pooped after Friday, check out Salon 94’s demon-wrestling solo show from Jayson Musson (of “Hennessy Youngman” fame) on Saturday and Columbia MFA candidates paying tribute to Walter Benjamin at the Jewish Museum on Sunday.

The Brooklyn Museum has named David Berliner president and chief operating officer. Given the museum’s PR problem with accusations of being pro-developer (and by extension, pro-gentrification) this is an odd choice. Berliner served previously as the chief operating officer of Forest City Ratner Companies, the developers who controversially created Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park using eminent domain to displace residents. [ARTnews]

Wow. Kanye West and Vanessa Beecroft can’t seem to stop doing controversial/dumb things. For their latest collaboration, they left models (“multi-racial women only”) standing for hours in the blistering sun on Roosevelt Island for so long that several women fainted and audience members (not production crew) felt so bad that they brought them bottles of water. Why? According to Beecroft, “The long wait before, I believe it was planned because [West] wanted the audience to get into this state of having to observe and having to stay.” [artnet News]

As New York rents skyrocket, in conjunction with higher labor and food costs, the city is hemorrhaging restaurants. Chefs are instead heading to midwestern cities to open places that can afford a “neighborhood” feel or culinary risk-taking. Meanwhile, landlords are ending up with vacant retail space or some combination of banks and Duane Reade locations. [Food Republic]

This post’s title-“Time to Let People Decide if 9/11 Sculpture is Art or Exploitation”-is pure click bait but the post isn’t. Reading through the article we watch the writer cite her own past criticisms of Eric Fischl’s sculpture back in 2002, Eric Fischl’s response years later and her reassessment of her position now. It’s rare to see that kind of bravery in writers. [The New York Post]

In other WTC news, a design has at last been chosen for the complex’s performing arts center. The winning proposal comes from Brooklyn-based firm REX, headed by former OMA architect Joshua Prince-Ramus (who spearheaded the famed Seattle Central Library alongside Rem Koolhaas). It’s a translucent marble box that slightly recalls OMA’s Casa da Musica, or perhaps I.M. Pei’s East Gallery. Those buildings are successful because they feel sturdy, timeless, and permanent yet lightweight and welcoming (as opposed to the 1 World Trade Center tower) and the performing arts center looks to hit those same notes. [Curbed]

It only took three weeks for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Councilman Jimmy Van Bremer to sit down for the meeting de Blasio promised in their latest skirmish over affordable housing, but it happened. Van Bremer has not backed down on his position that the so-called affordable housing at Phipps House slated for Queens is not a good idea. Now, a coalition of nearly a dozen community and arts organizations (Art F City included) will hold a summit on Sunday, Sept. 18, to discuss the Phipps Houses plan, the overdevelopment of western Queens and the SBJSA. [Times Ledger]

Not so sure about the photos on this site, but what the hell: YaPhoto is a new photography platform that’s launched in Cameroon with the mission of promoting an emerging community of Cameroonian photographers. [YaPhoto]

Art Basel has announced Buenos Aires as its first partner in the vaguely-defined Art Basel Cities Initiative. This is intended to “develop a program of cultural events designed to celebrate the city’s vibrant arts scene and raise its profile in the international art world as part of its economic development.” [Miami Herald]

We’ve never heard Joan Semmel’s theory that feminism comes into fashion when the market is down, because women’s art is less expensive. We’re not sure how this theory follows the rules of supply and demand. Art market experts, is this true? Anyway, an interview with painter and feminist Joan Semmel. [Hyperallergic]

Playboy magazine has announced they will drop nudity as the Internet has filled that void. Not to worry, though, they promise to still run photographs of women in provocative poses. [The New York Times]

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, so let’s recognize her OG status as a female mathematician in the 1800s who recognized the potential of computers before they even existed. [Motherboard]

Ben Davis weighs in on the new “trés Brooklyn” Rumney Guggenheim gallery, and as expected from a 23-year old French trustafarian, has opened with a bad street art show. “There is no way that Rumney Guggenheim gallery is anything other than a vanity project.” Ouch. [ARTnet News]

Up until recently, the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach only permitted artists who lived and worked in Latin America to be shown. Basically, they had a “no Chicanos” policy. Stuart Ashman, who has served as MOLAA’s president and CEO since 2011, worked with the museum’s board to change this policy. Carolina Miranda has the story. [Culture: High & Low]

We’re not in London for Frieze week, but if you are, this guide to all the happenings might come in handy. [artnet News]

Eric Fischl is now vouching for DNA-based art authenticating. Forgery concerns regarding his legacy and estate compelled him to throw his support behind the system, which would let artists sign their works with specks of synthetic DNA. Developed by the Global Center for Innovation at the State University of New York at Albany — who recently scored a $2 million funding grant from the ARIS Title Insurance Corporation — the method has already come under fire as being invalid unless Fischl can mark every work he’s created and sold with the new technology. [New York Times, Art Market Monitor]

This seems like an odd argument: are video games art? This seems like it was written by someone who has more experience with the world of commercial video games than contemporary art; I’ve been to plenty of galleries showing artist-made games and never given it a second thought. This is a good quote though: “Not all games deserve the title of art or high art. But, to be fair, we also sell terrible paintings and trashy books.” [Forbes]

In the latest from the cultural institution fundraising race, the Hirshhorn set a new record in receiving a $2 million gift from a trustee, the largest gift from an individual ever made to the Smithsonian museum. The donation comes at the end of their 40th anniversary year, and a campaign focusing on private fundraising in an era of tighter federal funding. [Washington Post]

Of everything that’s ever been written about selfies—which is really too much—this brief piece by Sam Anderson on the work of Alec Soth is probably the most pleasurable and worthwhile read. [The New York Times]

Yet another sign that Silicon Valley’s tech bubble is going to burst? Twitter is laying off 336 employees. The layoffs come with the just-announced return of co-founder Jack Dorsey as permanent CEO, and a year of struggling to attract new users and incurring financial losses. [Fusion]

Marc Fischer has been documenting the bland, middle-class suburban houses where hardcore punk was created using contact information from 80s zines and Google Street View. [ARTnews]

The New York Times has discovered the Fisher Landau Center in Long Island City. It’s been open to the public since 2003, but hey, better late than never. [The New York Times]

By far, the nerdiest YouTube we have ever seen: a Hungarian folk dance that demonstrates how a quick-sort algorithm works. [YouTube]

The Broad is hosting a talk between comedian Steve Martin and artist Eric Fischl. Why? They’re buddies and Steve Martin’s been a longtime collector of Fischl’s work. It’s on Monday in Los Angeles, but you’ll be able to livestream it. [e-flux]

Mallory Ortberg dug up a 1966 letter to the editors of Cat Fancy from Ayn Rand, explaining the philosophical value of cats to her. Since Rand wrote searing volumes on freeloaders, and is now the philosophical artillery store for Republicans who want to cut food stamps, it’s fascinating to see her make an exception for cats: because they amuse her. Bloggers discuss. [The Objective Standard]

Even net artists get Internet anxiety. In Bedford + Bowery, Giselle Zatonyl talks about the way the Internet digests information into dog food and how people process their anxieties online. It makes me sorry I missed her show “Discrete Systems” during Bushwick Open Studios. Eight more days to see the show. [Bedford + Bowery]

New York is so close to launching a pilot program for medical marijuana. And lawmakers are voting on the bill, which includes a “no smoking” provision, today. You can eat it, but you can puff on it. [New York Magazine]

Sad but good: Detroit is auctioning off foreclosed homes on the Internet. They’re hoping to fend off the speculators by stipulating that buyers must pay to renovate the homes and live there. [City Lab]

Noticed at Art Basel: Art collector flipping a purchase the same day he bought it. This is shitty. [Bloomberg Businessweek]

Artpace calls for applicants to its San Antonio residency. They will accept one Texan artist, one non-Texan from the US, and one foreigner. [Glasstire]

If we were in Philly this weekend, we know what we’d be doing: Force Field Project, an artist collaboration/festival of large scale installations and performances in unused spaces. I confidently recommend ceramicist, curator (and AFC friend) Sean Gerstley, who will be showing raku-fired raccoons. Get your tickets here. [Force Field Project, program guide]

If you’re in New York, it’s 14 degrees and there’s news of another impending storm. Blarg. News elsewhere is more interesting.

ALLOVERSTREET happens this Saturday in Baltimore, an event that invites visitors to trek to five arts spaces on East Oliver between Guilford and Greenmount. [Bmoreart]

Jason Foumberg reviews “Your Everyday Art World”, a book by Lane Relyea, that contends social gatherings of like-minded markers are the driving force of the art industry. The meat from Foumberg’s review, “Relyea views DIY circuit is described as training wheels for conventional institutional roles. It’s why apartment galleries pretend to have white cube walls and hand out typed checklists at their opening receptions. What has the potential to be a radical exhibition format mimics the art world professional standard; and whatever was actually radical in the DIY scene has been usurped by the elite curators and artists who float from biennial to biennial so that an apartment gallery’s “microutopian” potential, as “the everyday’s poetic antitext,” becomes the premise for the next big international biennial. Alternative always gets folded back into the mainstream. [New City]

I spent a couple hours at the pub last night watching figure skating and The Westminster Dog Show. (Mullane’s might be the best sports bar ever). Sky, the Wire Fox Terrier wins the show. Can’t wait to see him eat a steak! [The New York Times]

Painter Eric Fischl is now experiencing an upswing because he had a show at the Albertina and has some work on view at New York Academy of Art? Um, okay. [FT]

In case you missed it, Gallerist has a profile on Phillipe Vergne, the new director of MoCA, and his work at DIA. [Gallerist]

Too bad Randy Kennedy couldn’t get a comment from Crystal Bridges founder Alice Walton for his story on the show their planning for September: 100 under-recognized artists, culled from a list of more than 10,000. Still, a great read. [The New York Times]

A chicken has been slaughtered in the name of art. Heads have rolled. ARTINFO’s Sky Goodden breaks down the event, the aftermath and the precedents. [ARTINFO]

Smoking pot will give you a skinny waist. There’s probably some other factors contributing to the overall weight of pot smokers, but they’re definitely not as interesting. Now, like a make-you-feel-better pill or healthy vitamin, you can take your pot in liquid form. Sluurrrp. [The Daily Beast]

Hrag Vartanian produced a great GIF of Christie’s auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen last night. Also, rich people bought more contemporary art than ever before! Total sale from last night’s auction: $495 million. [Hyperallergic]

Former Brit PM Margaret Thatcher died. She did not have many liberal fans. [The Internet]

City Paper’s Baynard Woods scoops me on my own thoughts about Baltimore’s gallery scene, a mere hours after I arrived. It’s well worth a trip down there. [City Paper]

Time Out Chicago laid off Lauren Weinberg this week. That’s bad news for Chicago, which now has no full time art critics. Here’s hoping New York’s best critic, Howard Halle, doesn’t suffer from the same woes. He’s at Time Out NY. [Bad at Sports]

Eric Fischl will release a memoir titled “Bad Boy”. The book is due out May 7th. [Page Six]